Law School Graduates

Because we're living in a time when higher education serves only as a financial death sentence for young adults.

Law schools are looking to drive up enrollment numbers by enticing new students to apply. How can pre-law students take advantage of this trend and save money on law school?

* A case of Supreme Court techciting gone wild: What happens when your book is cited in a SCOTUS opinion, but to express an opinion you’ve never endorsed before? A whole lot of irony. [New York Times]

* The Justice Department is dropping its appeal over a federal order that would allow promiscuous prosti-tots minors to access the morning-after pill. Hooray, over-the-counter emergency contraception for all! [CNN]

* The National Law Journal just released the most recent edition of the NLJ 350. As we saw in the Am Law 100 and 200, “economic wariness” was pervasive throughout Biglaw in 2012. [National Law Journal]

* More women are “bringing home the bacon,” but it’s the cheap store brand because they can’t afford better. It’s been 50 years since the Equal Pay Act was signed into law, and women are still earning less money than men. [ABC News]

* When it came time for the ABA to change the time frame for law schools to submit jobs data, it pushed the decision back till August. Adopting the wait-and-see method already, huh? [ABA Journal]

* Jury selection has begun in the Trayvon Martin murder trial, where the verdict will hinge upon George Zimmerman’s credibility. It’s like we’re learning about trials for the first time, you guys. [Bloomberg]

* Because the Senate doesn’t work properly when it comes to doing things efficiently, Obama will nominate three candidates for the D.C. Circuit. The outrage! The horror! The court-packing! [Legal Times]

* Howrey going to sue everyone in time to meet this bankruptcy deadline? When you’ve only got a few days left before the statute of limitations expires, you file up to 33 suits per day. [Am Law Daily]

* Attack of the lawyer glut! If you’re a recent law school grad who’s still unemployed, chances are high that this chart detailing the ratio of lawyers to job openings will make you shed a tear. [The Atlantic]

* Tey Tsun Hang, the law professor convicted on corruption charges after having an affair with a student, is heading to jail for five months. Giving out all of that extra credit wasn’t worth it after all. [Bloomberg]

* Nidal Hasan, the accused Fort Hood shooter, will be representing himself in his murder trial. He’ll use a “defense of others” argument, which seems obtuse given the nature of the crime. [Huffington Post]

* Bradley Manning’s court-martial began with a bang, with the prosecution arguing that the young intelligence analyst put lives at risk, while his own attorney called him a “humanist.” [New York Times]

* Jill Kelley, the woman who helped bring about the downfall of General David Petraeus by exposing his affair, has filed a lawsuit against government officials alleging privacy violations of all things. [USA Today]

Should private law firms be able to use unpaid interns to staff their pro bono cases? The ABA thinks so.

It's commencement season. What will you be bringing to flip off your dean?

* Obama might have found out about the IRS scandal “when it came out in the news,” but the Office of White House Counsel knew what was going on weeks ago. Hooray, a new reason for people to lose their sh*t. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

* Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness through ridiculously expensive litigation: making up almost two percent of our GDP, our legal system is the most costly on earth, which isn’t exactly something we should be bragging about. [Corporate Counsel]

* “It’s no surprise these lawyers would want to get off this sinking ship.” It looks like things are going just swimmingly for Steven Donziger now that John Keker’s out as his defense attorney in the Chevron fraud case. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* “Fantasy sports is usually the first and last thing I’ll do each day.” Here’s some proof that there’s such a thing as work/life balance in Biglaw… which is only applicable if you’re a partner. [Am Law Daily]

* Law school enrollment is down, and so is tuition revenue, so the legal academy is now selling new degrees. It’s only a matter of time before they market employment timeshares. [National Law Journal]

* On the bright side, if you’re still looking for a job, our own David Lat has some advice on how to get one (and how NOT to get one). We miss summer associates’ misbehavior. [U.S. News & World Report]

* Congrats are in order for this weekend’s graduates, including the first graduates of LMU’s embattled law school — they won’t let a lack of ABA accreditation rain on their parade. [Knoxville News Sentinel]

If you're still looking for a job, then perhaps you should change some of your habits. Brian Tannebaum explains what you could be doing wrong.

A riddle: How is law school like going on a bad date?

Which law schools have reported inaccurate figures for their graduates' average indebtedness?

The outgoing ABA president attempts to make amends with law students and young lawyers....

* From the White House to the ivory tower: Cass Sunstein is leaving OIRA to return to Harvard Law. Perhaps his thoughts on behavioral economics and public policy will be appreciated in academia. [New York Times]

* It’s too late to apologize this time, Cesar. Greenberg Traurig has been sanctioned in the TD Bank to-do for the firm’s negligent failure to bring forth documents during discovery. [Tampa Bay Business Journal]

* Jared Loughner is reportedly set to plead guilty in the Arizona shooting attack that killed six people, including Judge John Roll, and injured 13, including former Representative Gabrielle Giffords. [Los Angeles Times]

* Lance Armstrong is going for the gold against the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, this time with a bid to Judge Sam Sparks for a restraining order blocking the USADA from forcing the cyclist into binding arbitration. [Bloomberg]

* “[T]his is not the time for us to become an international accrediting agency.” The ABA will remain a faulty U.S. accrediting agency, because the Legal Ed Section voted against accrediting foreign law schools. [ABA Journal]

* Apparently Texas Tech Law has more than beauty queens. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has appointed dean emeritus and current law professor Walter Huffman to the new Defense Legal Policy Board. [KCBD 11]

* Remember Joshua Gomes, the UVA Law student who allegedly broke into the school’s registrar office? As it turns out, there’s no more “allegedly” about it. We’ll likely have more on this news later today. [Daily Progress]

* Law school graduates’ tales of woe are still making headlines in newspapers. Please take heed, 0Ls, and remember that you decided to discount this info if you’re told that you “should have known better.” [Oregonian]

* If you want to eat mor chikin but the thought of supporting Chick-fil-A’s stance on gay marriage is giving you indigestion, now you can eat your fill with the assistance of Ted Frank’s chicken offsets. [Huffington Post]

The student speaker at Cooley Law's graduation offers an... interesting perspective...

Should companies be hiring attorneys straight out of law school? Insights from Susan Moon.

* Only 44% of Americans approve of how the Supreme Court is doing its job, but that’s probably because the other 56% wouldn’t know what the Supreme Court was unless the justices were contestants on a reality show. [New York Times]

* Having nothing to do with the outcome of this Tenth Circuit appeal, apparently a juror in the underlying case had no idea when the First Amendment was adopted. As Bush II would say, is our children learning? [U.S. Tenth Circuit / FindLaw]

* Who’s going to win the “Super Bowl” of Android patent trials? Nobody. Judge Richard Posner has issued a “tentative” order which noted that both sides of the Apple/Google case ought to be dismissed. [Reuters]

* You should’ve “known better”: in case we didn’t make it abundantly clear when we spoke about NALP’s data for the class of 2011, the job market for new law grads is being classified as “brutal.” [National Law Journal]

* U. Chicago Law revolutionized the field of law and economics, but much to their school’s, everyone else copied them. Now they’re thinking up new ways to do the same things. Gunners gotta gun. [Businessweek]

* Say hello to Mary Lu Bilek, the woman who’s been appointed as the new dean of UMass Law. Hopefully she’s not keen on using school credit cards for personal spending like the last dean. [Wall Street Journal]

* Occupy Wall Street protesters can’t sue NYC, its mayor, or its police commissioner, but they can sue the police. And with that news, “F**k tha Police” was sung in drum circles across the tri-state area. [Bloomberg]

How can we fix the broken model of law school economics? Professor Brian Tamanaha has some ideas.

* With more allegations of misconduct revealed, the Canadian Judicial Council met to discuss Justice Lori Douglas’s sex scandal inquiry. Unlike her legs in her nude picture spread, this media circus will likely close in July. [Winnipeg Free Press] * “I want to apologize. Obviously, mistakes were made.” Admitting you’ve got a problem is just the first step. Greenberg Traurig’s executive director apologized for the Biglaw firm’s apparent screw-ups in a Rothstein-related trial. [Miami Herald] * Blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng will be enrolling at NYU Law School on a fellowship. The administration is giving him a ritzy faculty apartment that comes complete with a kitchen full of Chinese food. He already knows how to eat like a law student. [New York Times] * Facebook is being sued in an amended consolidated class-action complaint for $15B over privacy issues, but Mark Zuckerberg was too busy getting married to Priscilla Chan to let it bother him. [Bloomberg] * “What [the f**k] comes next?” That’s what law school grads asked themselves when their commencement speakers tried to slap on a happy face and speak positively about the job market. [Connecticut Law Tribune] * But perhaps future law school grads will be able to find jobs more easily thanks to class offerings geared toward in-house counsel lawyering skills. Keep on dreaming that impossible dream. [Washington Post] * How does a small-time DUI attorney from California go from being an unknown to being a household name overnight? By filing a lawsuit filled with tawdry allegations against actor John Travolta. [Los Angeles Times]

More and more law school graduates are trying to seek bankruptcy protection from their mountains of student loan debt. Now, we know that reading comprehension is tested on the LSAT, but apparently, once students complete the law school entrance exam, that skill goes right out the window. How do we know? Because law school graduates, who freely signed up for student loans as law students, are now trying to shirk their repayment responsibilities....